The Katzke Dog Diary

Wow. We had a great day today. First, Eo and Henry stayed in their crates all day. As far as I can tell, Henry did not leave a giant puddle of drool in his crate. Eowyn didn’t act aggressive towards Henry at all, and she didn’t carry on for a huge long time when it was time to go for a walk. And the best was yet to come — the feeling I had when we were done with that walk.

The walk started out as a disaster. Every last thing that Eo is reactive to, from joggers to other dogs, arrived at once, right as we went out the door. And every time I got her calmed down again, another one would appear. I almost turned around and went back in — especially when I saw the woman walking the hellaciously reactive border collie that lived at the end of my block towards me. I know for sure that I let a few choice words escape my lips. (In a calm, quiet tone, of course.)

I’m not sure if tonight was the culmination of two YEARS of training Eowyn, or if it was just that I got REALLY stubborn and pissed off at the dogs, and managed to focus and control the seething grumblies in a way that led to success. Either way, I managed to do the “dances with dogs” training exercise tonight to a point where not only were both dogs doing it and doing it well, but we were actually having fun with it! Eowyn was heeling on lead (a first!) and only halfway reacted when a woman with some other dogs was walking them out to get the mail.

(For those not following along at home — Dances With Dogs is what I call the “lots of quick direction changes” training — it’s intended to teach a dog that consistently pulls and doesn’t watch the handler to heel on lead. Eowyn has pulled since the day she was born. Tonight was the FIRST night I have ever had her watching me and ignoring other people, dogs, and for ’scary things’ to jump out from under every car.)

The change was in my attitude. I don’t know how to describe it, but we’ve been working a lot on “calming” activities recently. I’ve been working to control my behavior, and I’ve been working to get the dogs to reliably get excited or slow down. The purpose of any command from the handler should be to calm the dog and focus their energy on the task at hand. (Thank you, Jennie.) That’s what I’ve been missing all these years. Sheesh.

Started with the clicker training again. Spent five minutes with Henry and Eo each. Just simple stuff, working with Henry and Eo on not being grabby with food and treats to refresh the click-and-treat. Henry’s getting it for the first time, but is SUCH a fast learner (really, he’s easy to please … Eo couldn’t care less unless there’s food) that I didn’t have to do much with him.

As for the exercise that we’re using to get back into clicker training, I’m briefly using this post from dogforums.com — Doggy Zen — to provide some basic structure to Eo and Henry’s training sessions.

Need to get more pupperoni or some chicken lunchmeat tomorrow.

Eo was reactive again. And very highly so. Something happened when we went out the door of the house that caused her to bite Henry about the ears and neck again. It had something to do with him going through the door before her. After that, he was afraid to go through doors. I let half the moth and mosquito population in Brazos County into my house while we worked on walking through doors on a leash… first with the door open, and then with the door closed and a sit-and-wait. However, Henry came out of it going in and out of doors just fine, and Eo didn’t react further once I took control of the situation. Must do more work to try to figure out what’s causing the reaction.

We walked about a mile and a half, covering the entire neighborhood. I really need to drive it one of these days to figure out the exact length.

Walking is still the only training period due to other commitments.

Both dogs had lots of energy tonight… I got home early at 4 when it was raining and they slept most of the time until 9pm when we walked. We walked for 20 minutes. They really had a lot of energy and I would’ve kept going, but I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Due to her high energy state, Eo was highly reactive. She barked at three cars.

I tried walking them on different sides of my body tonight. The night before, they had walked on their regular sides and had been very well behaved. Walking on different sides kept them from really knowing what to do. Eowyn walked very close to my side, which helped with the reactivity. I ended up doing the “reverse” correction far more often than I had to the night before.